Former Nigerian politician, Douglas Egharevba, faces deportation after a Canadian Federal Court upheld a ruling declaring Nigeria’s two major political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), terrorist organizations.
A judgment dated June 17, 2025, dismissed Egharevba’s bid to overturn a decision by Canada’s Immigration Appeal Division (IAD), which found him inadmissible under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) for belonging to groups implicated in terrorism and subversion of democracy.
Canadian authorities argued that both the APC and PDP have long been linked to political violence, electoral malpractice, and intimidation, with party leaders benefiting from and failing to stop the harm inflicted on Nigerians.
Egharevba, a PDP member from 1999 to 2007 before defecting to the APC until 2017, claimed his personal record was clean. But the court ruled that his membership during periods of widespread violence was enough to trigger inadmissibility, even without evidence of direct involvement.
The case focused heavily on the PDP’s conduct during the 2003 state and 2004 local government elections under then-President Olusegun Obasanjo. The IAD found, and Justice Phuong Ngo agreed, that party loyalists engaged in ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and killings of opposition supporters, acts that the leadership tolerated while enjoying the political gains.
Justice Ngo stressed that under Canadian law, subversion of a democratic process includes achieving political change by illicit means, even without force, and that “an admission of membership in an organisation is sufficient… regardless of the nature, frequency, duration or degree of involvement.”
Egharevba’s claim that violence was endemic across all Nigerian parties was rejected. The court ruled that, however flawed, Nigerian elections remain democratic processes in law, and undermining them for political advantage constitutes subversion.
